There was a palpable, tense undercurrent in the car. We’d spent the previous day on a 10 hour drive from the cool and green Bomdila to the horrible dusty town of North Lakhimpur. We’d been pelted with bananas en route by gregarious, drunk revellers and the only hotel we found in North Lakhimpur was shabby…

How on earth do you travel so much ? Isn’t it Expensive ?! It’s a question we get asked all the time and part of the reason we are writing this post is to debunk the myth that travel is expensive. What if we told you that we travel on just INR 2500 / day…

Something about his quiet demeanour stood out, his smile was humble, warm and inviting. His small home, dimly lit by a single naked bulb, was cluttered with rolls of canvas, painting materials and shelves full of curios.

The dark grey skies and slow drizzle adds to the sense of melancholy as one reflects on the unpredictable fury of nature. What must it have been like to live here, so far from anything else, so close to the edge of land, at the mercy of the ocean. What would have possessed the inhabitants of Dhanushkodi to persist, on this thin sliver of land, surrounded by salt water, braving the elements, with what would surely have been an omnipresent threat of annihilation hanging over their heads? Could it have been the faith that they would be protected by their lord, or was it simply that they had lived there for centuries and it was home.

Just ahead of the market is the old Landporten, the stone gate which marks the entry into the old town. Making our way through the massive arch and onto the cobblestoned main street the scene subtly changes. As the humdrum of the market fades away and one looks around the quaint streets and the old pillared mansions, the small churches and open skied traditional tamil homes with a hint of a European touch, a certain calm descends and time slows down just a little bit.

The North East of India is a region like no other. With hundreds of tribes, each with different customs, traditions and dialects it is as diverse and culturally rich as anywhere else in the world. However with the relentless march of time many of these traditions are getting lost in the swirl of modernisation, not…

In the monsoon of 2016 we embarked on a road trip from Bombay down to southern Maharashtra. The plan was to drive till Amboli down the western ghats and back up the Malvan and Konkan coast. The plan was great, but the weather gods played spoilsport. We had only made it a little beyond Matheran when…

In this episode of the reDiscovery Podcast we talk to international travel blogger Johnny Ward, about his venture Give Back Give Away which uses travel as a mean to support and help local commnities around the world. Johnny tells us about his journey to setting up Give Back Give Away, and how he is using…

What do you associate Bihar with? For most people the first thing that probably comes to mind is backwardness, poverty, crime and of course Laloo Prasad Yadav. However what a lot of people don’t realize is that Bihar is also the cradle of Buddhism and home to a number of important Buddhist sites. It is…

In this episode we take you to Ganj, a small hamlet outside Orchha, occupied by traditionally lower caste families, where Friends of Orchha, an NGO run by Asha D’Souza, helps villagers set up homestays, thus offering them an alternate source of income, a chance to experience a wider world view and live a dignified life. We…

Down to the river. It is pitch black as I stumble out of my tent and join the stream of humanity resolutely making their way towards the river in the inky darkness. It was only 5 am, but already the streets were lined with vendors selling everything from packets of flowers to hot milky tea….

We are back with Season 3 of the reDiscovery Podcast! This season we shine a light on people and organisations we have met during our journey across India, who are using travel as a force of good. These are folks who are working to preserve a form of dying art, culture or heritage or working…

Where are you travelling next ? This is probably the most common question when we meet up with friends and family and from our followers after a long break and we are almost always at a loss to answer this! The truth is our travel plans are usually very free flowing and we make maximum use of the…

The first question most people ask us after a trip, when we’re back after weeks on the road, tired, sometimes a little bedraggled and always with mounds of laundry, is ‘how was it’. And the answer, almost always is a spontaneous ‘great’, followed by stories of people and bus rides, yummy food and stunning monuments,…

Ok, so we have to admit, Patna is not your typical dream destination. However, on our recent journey through Bihar, we ended up spending four days in Patna and managed to find enough to keep busy. While the state is slowly shedding its negative image and we felt quite safe, infrastructure development has a long…